Swiss "JetMan" Yves Rossy canceled his first U.S. flight in a jet-propelled wing suit at the last minute Friday, saying he didn't have enough time to train. Rossy had planned to jump from a helicopter, then soar above Arizona's scenic Grand Canyon. The Federal Aviation Administration gave him the go-ahead less about an hour before the 51-year-old adventurer was scheduled to take off. But with spectators and reporters gathered ...

MINIMUM WAGE HIKEEVER since the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 set up a federal minimum wage, there have been few public issues in the U.S. on which there was so much agreement on the rightness of the goals and so much disagreement on how to get there. Last week the debate was fueled anew. In his economic message, President Kennedy urged Congress "to raise the minimum wage immediately to $1.15 an hour and to $1.25 within two years.'' The ...

Did the federal judge who wrote the decision overturning Prop 8 — California's ban on gay marriage — make his ruling because he wanted to marry his longtime boyfriend? That's the charge from the losing side in the decision issued last year by now retired Chief Judge Vaughn Walker. His ruling sent the case to what could be a possible showdown in the Supreme Court over the nature of marriage. Now that Walker has publicly confirmed he is ...

For the next two years, jobs are job No. 1. For everyone. Though economists will tell you that jobs are a lagging indicator even in a growing economy, for Americans of all stripes, including the political class in Washington, they are a leading one. The fates of both the Obama Administration and the new GOP class will be linked to job growth. There is a limit to what the federal government can do to create jobs, but ...

One of the most familiar of all trade names was booked for a major operation last week. The Federal Trade Commission told the manufacturers of Carter's Little Liver Pills to cut the word "liver" out of the product name. The tiny, white-coated globules, FTC found, are an irritative laxative , and have no medicinal effect on the liver. The FTC had spent several years, and undertaken a great deal of medical research in reaching its decision. Even now, his liver ...

Guided by burning flares, a transport plane dipped down out of the night over Biafra last week and landed with a shipment of condensed food for the secessionist state's starving population. When soldiers guarding the airstrip saw its cargo, they burst unashamedly into tears. On a country road a few miles away, relief workers held out bits of food to a group of hungry children. They ran, not knowing what to do with it. "We are going to have to ...

The Bratz may be hosting their final slumber party next month. That's because a federal judge ruled that MGA Entertainment, the maker of the popular, pouty-lipped dolls, has been violating a copyright held by Mattel, manufacturer of the Bratz' archrival for the affections of 6-year-old girls — Barbie. Judge Stephen Larson in Riverside, Calif., has ordered MGA to stop making and selling the Bratz dolls after the holiday shopping season, a ruling MGA's chief executive, Isaac Larian, calls "shocking and ...

The news put Americans in a state of shock; they knew that, after that unprecedented day, they would never be the same. With this dastardly attack, and after the greatest loss of civilian lives the U.S. had ever known, the federal government abridged the liberties of those it suspected of giving aid and comfort to the nation's enemies. It tried civilians in military courts, deprived them of due process, suspended the right of habeus corpus. The few ...

On Sept. 16, 2010, a team of U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigators arrived at a Shanghai purveyor of dough, macaroni and baby cereal. Federal authorities had long suspected that Shanghai Chuangi Food Co.'s plants were unsanitary. Many of its products, like soup base, had been shipped to the port of New York and ultimately placed in an unknown number of goods that ended up on kitchen tables in the U.S. That's why federal authorities assigned to one of the ...

Paul Schaller, a former Silicon Valley pilot and high-tech executive, has spent the past five years getting Quest Aircraft Co., a turboprop manufacturer in Sandpoint, Idaho, off the ground. But just when business was taking shape, he ran into a wicked recession that has made owning a private plane about as politically correct as wearing mink to a PETA convention. Schaller's salvation has been to exploit an overlooked and defensible niche: utility turboprops for missionary and humanitarian organizations that need ...